RARE \"Scottish Chemist\" Arthur Laurie Hand Drawn/Signed Symbols For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "Scottish Chemist" Arthur Laurie Hand Drawn Signed Symbols. Dr Laurie's historical documents have not come to sale in the last 30 years as most are in British Museums and others in the archived of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

ES-1581

Prof Arthur Pillans Laurie FRSE LLD

(1861 – 1949) was a Scottish chemist who pioneered the scientific analysis of

paintings. Laurie was born on 6 November 1861, the son of Simon Somerville Laurie FRSE and

his wife, Catherine Ann Hibburd. The family lived at Brunstane

House, an impressive 17th century country house, south He

was educated at Edinburgh Academy from

1871 to 1878, then studied Science at University of Edinburgh and

then King's College, Cambridge,

where he took a first in science in Holman Hunt interested

Laurie in the chemistry of paint and the scientific analysis of paintings.

Laurie pioneered the use of chemical analysis to discover the composition of

artworks, and so to show their true age and origins. He was the first to use

infrared photography to reveal deeper layers of paint. Through infrared work,

he found the date of a Rembrandt self-portrait where the

date painted by the artist had later been covered up.

In

1885 Laurie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Hios proposers were Peter Guthrie Tait, Alexander Crum Brown, Edward Sang and George Chrystal.

In

1895 Laurie became a lecturer at St Mary's Hospital Medical

School, and joined the Royal Commission on Secondary Education.In 1898 the Royal College of

Physicians made him an examiner in chemistry.

In

1900, Laurie became the principal of Heriot-Watt College,

Edinburgh. He held this position until 1928.

In

1912 Laurie became the professor of chemistry to the Royal Academy of Arts.

In

the First World War Laurie

did extensive, if perhaps controversial, work as Chairman of the Chemical

Inventing Committee, part of the Munitions Inventions Department, and also

served on the Chemical Waste Products and Buildings Committee. In

1929 he stood as a candidate for parliament at the General Election in the

constituency of Edinburgh

South for the Liberal party, finishing second. In 1939 Laurie

wrote the notorious The Case for Germany, (1939), a pro-Nazi work

which praises Hitler's Germany. The book commences with praising Hitler as a

painter and then expounds National Socialism. He continues with a defence of

Nazism as he experienced it during his stay in Germany and criticizes Marxist

socialism. Laurie, however, was not antisemitic and defends the Jewish people

on multiple occasions throughout his book, for example: "We find the Jew a

law-aoffering, hard-working citizen, and have no complaint to make." He

died on 7 October 1949.